The One We Didn't Know
by Ergo Ipso Facto
Summary: Post-AA5, a long-overdue funeral. Blackquill has no intention of attending. (Written for the kink meme)


Simon's driver's license expired while he was in prison. This is the kind of thing she never thought about until now, as they're parking outside his apartment. His license expired, and then he had Fulbright drive him around, and after a year of that he expected to be dead.

No. It wasn't Fulbright. And that's why they're all here.

"Do you want to go get him yourself?" says Apollo. "I can wait here."

"Nah, I could use another pair of arms in case we have to drag him out kicking and screaming."

"Athena, you once threw a policeman at me. I don't think you need my help in the manhandling department."

She shrugs and gets out of the car. "You're probably right. I can easily deal with a samurai or two, in the courtroom or out." She gets maybe a quarter of the way up the sidewalk, and then she hears the driver's-side door open and Apollo hurrying after her.

"You don't think he'll want to come?" Apollo says in the elevator.

She shakes her head. "Don't you feel conflicted about it, too? It's terrible, but I don't know what I'm supposed to think. Should we even be going? We never knew the real Fulbright. It feels like an intrusion, but at the same time..."

"'Should I feel more strongly than I do?'" says Apollo. "I've been asking myself that all morning."

They reach the seventh floor. Athena has to steel herself to ring Simon's doorbell; Apollo doesn't comment.

"I've no intention of going with you, Cykes-dono."

The words don't surprise her. Neither does the discord running through them. She positions herself in front of the peephole and says, "Come on, I'll bet you're already dressed for it."

(She suspects Apollo wants to ask whether he owns anything that _isn't_ funereal black. The answer is "no.")

"I don't make it a practice to attend the last rites of strangers."

She knows he won't concede anything on the grief front. She knows he's even more uncomfortable than she is. But maybe there are other buttons she can press. "But we drove so far out of our way to get you."

"Your solicitude is appreciated, and I hope you won't be late on my account. Goodbye."

No way she's letting him get out of this that easily. She can sense that he's suffering. And after everything that's happened in the past few weeks, he has to _know_ she can sense it. "Apollo, now's the time to bust out your secret talent for lock-breaking."

Apollo starts. "My what?"

"You hang out with Trucy all the time. Don't tell me none of her skills have ever rubbed off on you."

"Trucy can break locks?" he says, with the stricken look of a man who suddenly wants to go home and check the security of his diary.

"Never mind. Simon!" She turns back to the door. "The Chief Prosecutor himself asked us to pick you up." (It was actually Mr. Wright, and it was more of a suggestion than a request - but he was calling from the Chief Prosecutor's office, so close enough.) "So you're coming to Bobby Fulbright's funeral if we have to break the door down and frogmarch you to Apollo's car personally."

There's a long pause. Then Simon says, dryly, "All this shrieking is upsetting Taka."

"Then open the door so we can talk reasonably." He doesn't answer. "I'm prepared to wait you out, and you know I am, and you know you don't want to make me miss the funeral. So please."

It takes a little more work than that. But fifteen minutes later, Apollo is driving to the chapel and says in a voice so low only Athena can hear it, "I'm impressed. You really have his number." Athena checks the rear-view mirror and sees Simon Blackquill staring silently out the window. She can't read him if he won't say anything, and for the first time she wonders if she was wrong to force the issue.

Maybe they're all wrong. Detective Fulbright was a good man, they'll say. And she's sure he was. But he wasn't a good man any of them ever knew.

* * *

Simon's not getting out of the car. "I have no place here. My attendance would turn this ceremony into a farce."

"Only if you start making a bunch of stupid puns," says Athena, and reminds herself that it would not be dignified to start yanking on his arm to try to drag him out. She has to stay solemn and appropriate to the situation. But she's getting fed up with him. The discord between his sadness and all his attempts to conceal it is making her head hurt. "You're allowed to be here. I'm allowed to be here. _Everyone_ is allowed to be here, so don't make a scene."

"I never knew him."

"Neither did we," says Apollo. "That's part of what's so cruel about it - that missed opportunity." Apollo would know about that.

"He's right. We can show support for the people who did know him, and that we understand the world is a poorer place without him. And if his spirit is out there, I think he'll be happy to know that we care."

"Hmph."

_Don't you "hmph" at me,_ she almost snaps, but she sees the Chief Prosecutor's car pulling in a few spots away, and Mr. Wright said he'd be riding in with him. "Polly, you go meet up with the boss. We won't be long."

Apollo edges away. Simon gives her a skeptical look. "Oh, we won't, will we?"

"That's right. We won't." She looks him straight in the eyes. "Listen. The interactions we all had with F - with the Phantom meant something to us, and those are things we lost when we found out Fulbright was dead. You more than anyone. You do have something to mourn." He doesn't look convinced. She offers her hand. "Simon, will you please come in with us? Humor me."

* * *

It's a good ceremony, with all appropriate circumstance for a man of justice who lived and died trying to uphold his ideals. In fact, they might even be going heavier on the circumstance than usual. But Athena's not a good judge of that - she hasn't been to many funerals. She still remembers how painful they were when her power was stronger. And after her mother's - well, never mind. It seems appropriate, is all.

"By rights," says Mr. Edgeworth, "this should have happened a long time ago. I regret that we didn't discover the detective's fate sooner."

"It's not your fault. But I think it's even more important that he got a proper sendoff now, with all these people here to honor his memory." Mr. Wright shakes his head. "For so long, no one could even have guessed he was gone."

Edgeworth looks uncomfortable. "Records actually show that one person suspected something was wrong. Unfortunately, his concerns weren't taken seriously at the time."

"You don't mean..." Mr. Wright follows Edgeworth's gaze, and after a moment so does Athena - to a big detective in his late thirties, wearing a long coat, a bandage on his face, and a serious contender for the most miserable expression she has ever seen. "Oh, no. The poor guy."

"Detective Dick Gumshoe," Simon tells her under his breath. "I don't know him, but I know of him."

"Gumshoe knew the real Fulbright?" says Apollo. "I'd like to hear about that sometime."

"Yeah, I'll bet there are some interesting stories there," says Mr. Wright. "Maybe someday when this memory isn't so fresh, we can ask him about it."

Gumshoe notices the group and comes over a few minutes later, though there's no indication he knew they were talking about him. He exchanges subdued pleasantries with Mr. Edgeworth and Mr. Wright, and they talk briefly about things and people Athena has never heard of, and then he starts to move away.

And stops in front of Simon. "You're that Prosecutor Blackquill, right? I'm really sorry the Phantom got you like that, pal."

"Thank you," says Simon, and shakes his hand once, courteously.

"And thanks for coming. I think Bobby would've appreciated it."

"Bobby would have...?" There is a choked sound in his voice, and Athena can hear anger rising behind it. "Detective. Please. I never met the man." Gumshoe shrugs as though this doesn't matter. Athena thinks maybe she should drag Simon out of here before he says anything else, but she doesn't act fast enough. "Would the real Fulbright have believed in me? Would the real Fulbright have tried so hard to look after someone he believed to be a killer?" The bitterness in his voice says "of course not."

Gumshoe says "Definitely."

Simon looks like he's been hit, and walks back to the car alone.

* * *

On the drive back, a few blocks from his apartment complex, he suddenly says, "I knew it was a lie, but I wanted to believe him. That heap of rubbish about being an undercover agent, about the Phantom forcing his hand."

Apollo's hands tighten slightly on the steering wheel. Athena says, "I know."

"I laid that trap hoping he wouldn't spring it. I hoped you wouldn't discover what you did."

"I know." And she knew it then, too.

"That's all I have to say about that." And there, at least, there is no discord.

So she doesn't say anything else, doesn't follow him back up to his floor, doesn't ask if he's going to be all right. She just says, "Call me sometime, we'll get noodles" in the instant before he closes the car door, and lets him go.


End file.
